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This market monitor provides in-depth insight into the market for set-top box middleware, UX software, and operating systems. Its comprehensive written analysis serves to draw attention to the industry's most important trends and competitive dynamics.

The bi-annual M&A Market Monitor identifies the key M&A and investment activity in the media and advertising landscape. Over the last 6 months we saw a consolidation of TV networks across the US and Europe, increased investment from agencies particularly in APAC and continued activity from online companies. Data companies and emerging markets were the hottest target for acquisition and funding in H1 2016, but media players vary their investment strategies according to their development plan.

Freewheel has announced the acquisition of a French-based online video firm specialising in technology for programmatic video advertising StickyADS.tv for an undisclosed sum.
Our Analysis
Comcast brought on board its operations the video ad technology firm FreeWheel back in March 2014 for $360m. With that acquisition it marked the start of its digital strategy, showing its strong interest in the online space. Back then FreeWheel had assumed a more than $10m revenues start-up survival pass and it had enlisted major broadcaster clients like Fox and NBC helping them to monetise their online video content. RTL, a European broadcaster, in a similar way moved into video monetisation by acquiring SpotX (for programmatic) also in 2014 for $144m and Smartclip (for European expansion) investing €46.9m for a 93.75% stake in March 2016.

Sky unveils its new Sky Q multimedia home gateway set-top boxes
UK Satellite pay TV and ISP provider Sky has announced its new Sky Q set-top box family. The new product range, set to launch early 2016, features two flavours of multimedia home gateways (MHG): the standard box “Sky Q” and its premium equivalent “Sky Q Silver”, there is also a companion thin client branded the “Sky Q Mini”...

UK pay TV market leader Sky today unveiled a new suite of premium products, grouped together under the Sky Q brand, designed to offer the most complete and joined-up TV viewing experience possible. The service will be made available to the operator’s satellite customers in the UK and Ireland in early 2016.

Connectable consumer devices are continuing to drive content consumption online and multiscreen. 2015 will see video accounting for over half of all internet traffic. This new behaviour has resulted in additional costs in processing and distribution, as such linear TV remains the more favourable method in creating new revenue. However, new monetisation opportunities such as analytics-based programming advertising and recommendations-based content delivery can offset these additional costs. The monetisation of connected devices is also leading service operators to diversify their service provisions.

In early May 2014, London’s Metropolitan Police announced it would be spending almost £1 million on a trial of 500 body-worn video surveillance cameras for police officers in 10 of London’s boroughs. The move comes after several high-profile cases in recent years calling into question the integrity and transparency of police officer’s actions – for example with the shooting of Mark Duggan (which later sparked the London riots of 2011).

BBC iPlayer video consumption on tablets has now reached parity with viewing on the PC. Data from the UK public broadcaster shows that in March 2014, 29% of iPlayer video requests were initated from PCs, with a further 29% initiated from tablets.